ETHNIC – Islam21chttps://www.islam21c.com
Articulating Islam in the 21st CenturyThu, 21 Feb 2019 21:12:34 +0000en-GBhourly1147071544Reflecting on ‘Between the World and Me’https://www.islam21c.com/islamic-thought/i-realised-that-im-still-actually-quite-racist/
https://www.islam21c.com/islamic-thought/i-realised-that-im-still-actually-quite-racist/#commentsTue, 23 Feb 2016 18:18:30 +0000http://www.islam21c.com/?p=20745Reflecting on Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates “When I finished reading this book, I realised that I’m still actually quite racist.” These were the words spoken to me by a white doctor of Anthropology who has spent her life defending black men facing the death penalty in the South of the US. Her ...

“When I finished reading this book, I realised that I’m still actually quite racist.”

These were the words spoken to me by a white doctor of Anthropology who has spent her life defending black men facing the death penalty in the South of the US. Her own story is one full of racism, having grown up in a racist house that despised her for rejecting their ‘ways’, in having a sister who married a member of the KKK in order to have a pure blood child, and being generally surrounded in a miasma of bigotry and violence.

Despite all of this, she grew up to fight every inch of prejudice and structural racism that she sees. It is that effort that I have learnt from directly, as she has taught me to learn the stories of my clients and their families, as humans, and not as witnesses. Her never-ending devotion to understanding is precisely the reason why my children call her Dado (grandmother) when she comes to stay at our home, because that is the relationship we feel she has with them.

And yet, on the completion of reading this book, my friend and mentor confided that she had not escaped her racism. Having now completed Coatses’s beautiful epistle to his son, I now understand how she came to that conclusion. It is not that I think my friend has any racist or bigoted tendencies, it is that Ta-Nehisi Coates forces us to reflect on our life and the lives of those around us, as we listen to his voice.

The experience he recounts, albeit with a brief sojourn to Paris, is largely about his experiences as a black man in the US. For me, as someone whose entire working life has revolved around policy and practice in the War on Terror, his intersection of the black experience to that of Muslims is a welcome sign of someone who sees and understands the structural nature of the threat we face,

“Michael Brown did not die as so many of his defenders supposed. And still the questions behind the questions are never asked. Should assaulting an officer of the state be a capital offense, rendered without trial, with the officer as judge and executioner? Is that what we wish civilization to be? And all the time the Dreamers are pillaging Ferguson for municipal governance. And they are torturing Muslims, and their drones are bombing wedding parties (by accident!)”

However, it is not these limited references to Muslims where I connected to Coates…it was in his experience as a black man. Throughout the book, he references moments where the Wu-Tang Clan, Nas, and Biggie Smalls become a soundtrack to certain experiences. He speaks of Malcolm X, James Baldwin and Franz Fanon, the names that woke me from my slumber. It dawns on me, that while I have never experienced the specific systematic discrimination of young black Americans, my younger self had subconsciously adopted their resistance as a reference point for my own. Perhaps it is because Asian communities had provided little to no avenue for resistance or counter-culture that could help to define our specific experience in the UK, that I, and many like me, chose to identify so strongly with conceptions of being black – that is – until for some of us, Islam provided a holistic response.

Ultimately, the central concern Coates has, is how his son will respond to the world around him. A world where he is trying to provide Samori with every opportunity he can, while at the same time forcing him to realise that the system that surrounds him and props up his privileges is utterly broken,

“I do not believe that we can stop them, Samori, because they must ultimately stop themselves. And still I urge you to struggle. Struggle for the memory of your ancestors. Struggle for wisdom. Struggle for the warmth of The Mecca. Struggle for your grandmother and grandfather, for your name. But do not struggle for the Dreamers. Hope for them. Pray for them, if you are so moved. But do not pin your struggle on their conversion. The Dreamers will have to learn to struggle themselves, to understand that the field for their Dream, the stage where they have painted themselves white, is the deathbed of us all. The Dream is the same habit that endangers the planet, the same habit that sees our bodies stowed away in prisons and ghettos.”

How does a father teach his child this lesson in a way that makes sense and is understandable? I am a father of three boys, and I am someone who works with trauma survivors. To what extent do I expose them to the reality of this world, and to what extent do I ask them to reject the superficial veneer that hides the truth of the matter? How do we teach them to resist prevailing narratives, when we want them to lead comfortable, poverty free, peaceful lives? Coates does not provide clear answers to these questions, but his voice of frustration vibrates like a deafening bell for the parents who live the same struggle,

“All my life I’d heard people tell their black boys and black girls to “be twice as good,” which is to say “accept half as much” These words would be spoken with a veneer of religious nobility, as though they evidenced some unspoken quality, some undetected courage, when in fact all they evidenced was the gun to our head and the hand in our pocket. This is how we lose our softness. This is how they steal our right to smile. No one told those little white children, with their tricycles, to be twice as good. I imagined their parents telling them to take twice as much. It seemed to me that our own rules redoubled plunder.”

Resisting pre-conceived notions of what is acceptable is no easy task. As a British-born Pakistani, I have made it my ultimate aim to shield my children from the over-obsession with whiteness, and in this instance I mean the specific desire that many Asians have for lighter coloured skin. My wife and I are dark skinned, as are two out of our three children. My eldest boy, in particular, has a skin colour and melanin count that does not require much protection from the sun we have in the UK, except on exceptionally bright summer days. When I see my wife fuss unnecessarily about putting a hat on him because others will comment on further darkening, it is the only time that I become upset. Upset, not with her, but with the way in which we have been forced to construct our decisions. Largely, I have been successful in shielding my children from this, but then I receive a curve-ball that I never anticipated. My middle boy, Aadam, saying, “Why am I the only one who isn’t dark? I want to be dark like you all.” I never told them one way or another about what is and isn’t beautiful, it was his own anxiety about being different and wanting to fit in better with those of us around him.

So how do we move away from the superficial? How do my children, and the son of Coates, avoid the ever present elephant in the room, that colour, race and class are everything. Coates realises that the truth itself is where any emancipation can begin, by accepting the truth of who we are, and the world that surrounds us. The problem with this acceptance, is that it leaves us in a very bleak place. For the sake of our children, it is not enough to simply encourage them thrive in a hostile environment as singular case studies of success,

“Here is what I would like for you to know: In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body—it is heritage. Enslavement was not merely the antiseptic borrowing of labor—-it is not so easy to get a human being to commit their body against its own elemental interest. And so enslavement must be casual wrath and random manglings, the gashing of heads and brains blown out over the river as the body seeks to escape. It must be rape so regular as to be industrial. There is no uplifting way to say this. I have no praise anthems, nor old Negro spirituals. The spirit and soul are the body and brain, which are destructible—that is precisely why they are so precious. And the soul did not escape. The spirit did not steal away on gospel wings.”

‘Between the World and Me’ is a book I will return to again and again. In particular, I will return to it when I am in need of helping my children make sense of the world that surrounds them. My instinct is to shield them, but perhaps that is the most sure-fire way of disabling them, and it is precisely there that Ta-Nehisi Coates makes his most important contribution.

]]>https://www.islam21c.com/islamic-thought/i-realised-that-im-still-actually-quite-racist/feed/220745How To Create Hatehttps://www.islam21c.com/politics/how-to-create-hate/
https://www.islam21c.com/politics/how-to-create-hate/#commentsTue, 26 Jan 2016 17:51:25 +0000http://www.islam21c.com/?p=20421“What does it take for the citizens of one society to hate the citizens of another society to the degree that they want to segregate them, torment them? [It is] a psychological construction imbedded deeply in their minds by propaganda that transforms those others into ‘The Enemy’.” [The Lucifer effect, Zimbardo]. On Monday the 4th ...

“What does it take for the citizens of one society to hate the citizens of another society to the degree that they want to segregate them, torment them? [It is] a psychological construction imbedded deeply in their minds by propaganda that transforms those others into ‘The Enemy’.” [The Lucifer effect, Zimbardo].

On Monday the 4th of January a Buddhist man was assaulted by a 20 year old for being ‘an ISIS bomber’.

The Buddhist, Sri-Lankan man was abused and assaulted on the top deck of the bus; accused of carrying a bomb and harassed for being an ‘ISIS supporter’.

Incidents such as these have been occurring increasingly following ‘trigger’ events such as the Charlie Hebdo attack, Tunisian shootings in June and the Woolwich attack.

Muslims and non-Muslims alike are experiencing Islamophobic hate crime all across the globe, from America, through France and the UK.

Trigger events have caused negative stories in the Media, and spiked hatred online as well as offline.

There is no denying that the media is a powerful social agent, wielding enough power to influence communities and societies’ perceptions about topics, groups and ideologies.

It creates a narrative and stereotypical conceptions about ‘the other’ which dehumanises perceptions about ‘the other’. This process, in of itself, involves using derogatory terms against Muslims. Statements perpetuating the idea ofMuslims ‘having their own Muslim world’, being ‘terrorists’ and ‘extremists’, are just a few examples of the vilification Muslims experience at the hands of the Establishment Media.

The depiction of ‘the other’ as being less human creates an image of this group as being a fundamental threat to the values and beliefs of a particular country.

Being fed such an idea can turn any normal human being with values and a moral stance to carry intolerable thoughts, ideas or, worse yet, actions, towards others.

Dehumanisation

The First Steps: Part of a method of war has always involved creating propaganda whereby an opponent, ‘the enemy’ group, become labelled as being less human; a threat; not deserving of any human mercy or compassion.

We can cite many instances in history whereby the above tactic has been used and, in worst-case scenarios, has led to the total destruction and genocide of a race, religion or group.

French journalist, Jean Hatzfeld, interviewed ten Hutu Milita members who were arrested in prison for committing atrocities against the Tutsi minority during the Rwanda catastrophe in 1994. The prisoners were ordinary people and their comments led the journalist to conclude that “human beings are capable of totally abandoning their humanity for a mindless ideology, to follow and then destroy the group known as ‘The Enemy’.

Negativity over Positivity

Researchers have concluded that the power of negativity bears a greater weight and impact than positive stimuli. Negative associations carry more weight in the brain due to our innate survival instincts. Therefore, continually being presented with terms of this ‘other’ Islamic group wishing to kill, overtake countries and destroy the culture of a particular country, creates a paranoia in the minds of regular people. Until recently, their sole concerns extended to what to have at tea time on a Saturday afternoon.

“With public fear notched up and the enemy threat imminent, reasonable people act irrationally, independent people act in mindless conformity and peaceful people act as warriors. Dramatic visual images of the ‘enemy’ on posters, television, magazine covers, movies and the internet imprint perceptions in the mind with powerful emotions of fear and hate.”[1]

Humans have, in the past, gone above and beyond in their assault and torture against their own kind once they are viewed as no longer being part of their tribe or community. Once they bear the mark of being a threat to themselves and their families, they become a target for attack. A feeling of superiority of one’s own race or tribe takes over. This, combined with the view of ‘the other’ as inhumane, diminishes all consideration for the principle of ‘right or wrong’.

We need to recognise that propaganda such as this has existed throughout history, with devastating results. In most cases, the land has seen the genocide of one particular race as a result.

It is imperative that we continue countering such efforts by providing positive alternatives. We must shed this apathetic, and oftentimes elected, attitude of victimisation. ‘I am the victimised group. Why should I have to make an effort, when they started it?’ Such mentality fruits nothing except lethargy and a sigh of hopelessness.

Make conversation, not War

Islam is not a race, therefore in my opinion Islamophobia cannot constitute the term ‘racism’. However, being an Islamophobe automatically makes a person intolerant.

It is crucial to live in a harmonious environment whereby there is tolerance towards one another, regardless of religion, background and ethnicity.

Whilst it is important to counter stereotypical views from Non-Muslims towards Muslims, there is a slight trend rising amongst certain Muslim communities whereby families or young people carry a ‘dislike’ or fear towards non-Muslim ‘Whites’. A student yesterday told a story of how someone in her neighbourhood made an Islamophobic comment about her head covering, to which another student made a comment about how she ought to live somewhere with fewer ‘White people’. This is counterproductive, as it distances human beings from one another and exacerbates the problem.

Many organisations, communities and groups have made great efforts to dispel the intolerance in society. They have invited the public to their venues for open dialogue, offering the opportunity to engage in discussion about irrational fear and, in so doing, possibly eradicate stereotypical views.

Social interventions which aim to increase contact between groups of people from different backgrounds and religions establish tolerance as the social norm in society. Efforts to build connections with groups should continue, be encouraged and more should always be done. We, as a Muslim community, possess powerful platforms for building and maintaining networks, amongst which are our mosques, businesses, cafés and restaurants. Let us use them to carve a society open to diversity and tolerant of difference.

]]>https://www.islam21c.com/politics/how-to-create-hate/feed/420421Can Muslims be racist?https://www.islam21c.com/islamic-thought/can-muslims-be-racist/
https://www.islam21c.com/islamic-thought/can-muslims-be-racist/#commentsFri, 27 Nov 2015 10:40:38 +0000http://www.islam21c.com/?p=19909Can Muslims be racist? Ten years ago I worked a temporary job in a factory during the summer holidays from university. There I once met in passing a Pakistani gentleman who was to say something to me that I still remember to this day. When he learned during a conversation on the production line that ...

Ten years ago I worked a temporary job in a factory during the summer holidays from university. There I once met in passing a Pakistani gentleman who was to say something to me that I still remember to this day. When he learned during a conversation on the production line that I was studying an undergraduate degree in Biochemistry, he asked: “Maybe you can do some research and find out why English people are superior to us?” At the time I just smiled politely and carried on working, but I have found myself recalling this man’s statement, and the underlying sentiment it betrayed, increasingly commonly over the last decade. At first I thought, what a poor soul he was to suffer from an inferiority complex after the colonisation of his ancestors. However, engaging with different kinds of Muslim discourse and activism in recent years has given me the impression that this man merely expresses openly what many of us have internalised without even realising.

This came to mind strangely enough as I was trying to make sense of the incidents on London buses a few weeks ago caught on camera, where a black woman in one case and a black man in another, verbally abused and threatened to physically harm some Muslim passengers. In their respective tirades, which lasted several minutes each, they made reference to the most egregious racist language against those Muslims; language that would even make the editors of The Sun shy. Many articles and comment pieces were written, the videos were shared far and wide amongst Muslims and even mainstream news websites, and the perpetrators, within days, turned themselves in to the police, ostensibly showing signs of remorse and fear for their safety.[1][2]

These events sparked a slew of racial slurs against the perpetrators by some foolish Muslims, which then led to some Black brothers and sisters understandably being offended. Some used this as an opportunity to highlight what they felt was racism within the Muslim community that they had suffered. It led me to ask myself and others the question: can Black/Minority Ethnic (BME) individuals actually be racist? The little sociology I had been exposed to came to my mind on the nature of race, racism, privilege, and so on. The occurrence of prejudice and discord between BME and whites is something well known. However, I was trying to grapple with something different: minorities appropriating racist language towards one another; and the more I read on this subject the more I remembered this man from the factory.

Many have highlighted the unfortunate existence of racial prejudice within some Muslim communities, and they should be commended for this. Many have done excellent work to address some of the ignorance that exists that contributes to this problem. I believe, however, that in order to fully rid the Muslim mind of the disease of racism and racial prejudice, giving a lecture on the life of Sayyiduna Bilāl (raḍiy Allāhu ʿanhu) or a list of Islamic evidences about unity and brotherhood will not do the job. I do not think many Muslims need to be told by an Islamic scholar that oppressing, mocking or insulting another person is something forbidden in Islām. Rather, in our arsenal we must have a process of decolonising the Muslim mind and purifying it of the stains and characteristics of Jāhiliya (pre-Islamic ignorance).

Firstly, let us think about the concept of race.

Race is a social construct, like money—something with no material or credible scientific basis, but merely a convention society agrees on.[3] Our experience of race appears to be fundamentally euro-centric, although other cultures have had similar constructs such as the Hindu caste system. From the outset, it is worthy of note that the Islamic worldview does not seem to accept the notion of race as we understand it today. Rather, from the sources and early discourses in Islām, notions like tribes, lineages and people’s geographical locations seem to be the closest analogies, which were all trumped by a new classification of human beings the Quranic message introduced: those who profess belief in and acceptance of its message, and those who do not. It was partly for going against this Divine categorisation the Munāfiqūn of Madīna were censured when they referred to the Muslims of Madīna as “O people of Yathrib” instead of “O believers.”[4] Incidentally, the fuqahā (Islamic jurists) appear to even reject the notion of citizenship being necessitated by where one was born, but rather one’s consciously chosen or professed way of life and values are what qualifies them for full citizenship of the Muslim nation.

Though race as we know it is a social construct invented outside of the traditional Islamic worldview, it must not be ignored. This is because—whether we like it or not—it exists in our cultures today due to many factors (that we can thank European history for), as a means of social stratification and subjugation. Ignoring race would be ignoring a monumental historical and on-going system of injustice. It is also important to note that “Muslim-ness” is also a racialised social construct in our time (as explained in: Islamophobia IS Racism[5]).

Arguably the Muslims’ aim should be not to ignore these social constructs but to confront them and work towards their eventual dismantlement as constructs – for future generations. Indeed it would be a sign of a colonised mind to maintain perpetually these ignorant and unjust inventions imposed upon us by others. It does not take an anthropologist to recognise that racism (or even race) does not come naturally to mankind, but it is a quickly learned behaviour particularly for a child unfortunate enough to have a jāhili upbringing. Anyone with experience in raising children recognises that the pure fitra Allāh created human beings upon does not automatically acknowledge these constructs.

What about racism?

In sociology, racism is not just racial prejudice, but it describes a systematic disadvantage based on race, where one race is either explicitly or implicitly privileged above another. This is why it is important not to ignore race whilst there exists racism or indeed racial prejudice. It may seem like a trivial or pedantic point but the consequences of ignoring the difference between racial prejudice and racism—the systematic abuse of power and privilege—in fact include an exacerbation of the problem.[6] As the sociologists’ argument goes, individual instances of racial prejudice can occur to anyone from any group. However, the reasoning as to why Blacks cannot be racist towards Whites is because the former do not stand to benefit from the latter’s systematic and institutionalised disadvantage.

This is not to say that instances of racial prejudice do not exist, but when it does—as the argument goes—it is not called racism. This oft-refuted notion of BME individuals being ‘racist’ towards White people is called ‘reverse racism’. There is a wealth of written material refuting reverse racism, but when it comes to racism or racial prejudice amongst BME people including Muslims, more subtle and hidden notions like ‘internalised oppression’, ‘horizontal racism’ and ‘white passing’ theories come into play.

Horizontal racism

The recent events we are dealing with are instances of BME people exhibiting racial prejudice and language towards one another. This is not something new, in fact it had been a well-known tool for enduring subjugation over populations by colonisers: divide and rule. The Belgian colonisation of what is today Rwanda is a poignant example of strategically favouring the Tutsis over the Hutus[7] to create a rift between them which precipitated a genocide a century later. They were both subjugated compared to the colonisers but distinguished from one another. Furthermore, racial prejudice can occur within the same ‘race’ as well, with members appropriating and perpetuating narratives and standards of normativity prescribed by the normalised (white) group.

If someone thinks that they are free from this then chances are they are infected without even knowing. For example, what kind of view do we have of people who come “fresh off the boat” from the lands of our forefathers? How do we react when we hear their broken English and their inability to grasp aspects of our culture, idioms and norms? How do young brothers and sisters feel when they are seen in public with their own parents even, who may stand out because of their ‘otherness’? How much money is spent on beauty products designed to make dark skinned sisters look and feel ‘fair and lovely’? How do we react to the history of concentration camps and extermination of innocent white Jews compared to innocent Black Africans?[8][9] Think about what our notions of beauty are, of success, of what is ‘normal’, and to a dangerous extent, what is right and wrong; our values.

I cannot put it as eloquently as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabbazz, also known as Malcolm X:

“Who taught you to hate the texture of your hair? Who taught you to hate the colour of your skin to such extent that you bleach to get like the white man? Who taught you to hate the shape of your nose and the shape of your lips? Who taught you to hate yourself from the top of your head to the soles of your feet? Who taught you to hate the race that you belong to so much that you don’t want to be around each other?”

White passing

Many have grown up internalising stereotypes about their own identity, or with an inherent inferiority complex about their own race or culture. This leads to something referred to as white-passing, where some people may temporarily or permanently pass off as the ‘normalised’ or ‘superior’ group, and even adopt the racism of this group against their own or another minority. This appears to be what had taken place on the buses recently. Members of another minority ethnicity appropriated the Islamophobic language and rhetoric invented by the privileged on another minority—in this case Muslims.

It is also reminiscent of the traditional ‘Uncle Tom’; the House Negro who sold out his fellow Africans for favour with the slave masters; those Jews that fought for Hitler despite his desires to exterminate their own people; those “Muslims” and “Ex-Muslims” today who jump at the opportunity of showing how enlightened and superior they are—like the dominant, normalised culture around them—compared to those backwards, inferior, extreme Muslims.

So what does this all mean?

In order to truly overcome race related issues in our community, we need to wash our minds of the stains of colonialism and subjugation. A culture where Black Muslims suffer racial prejudice or racism from other Muslims is a culture that is still deeply influenced by characteristics of Jāhiliya. We need to purge our minds of inferiority and subjugation to manmade frames of reference and normativity, whether this be in what constitutes beauty, success, honour or values. This is why it does not require teaching merely the fact that racism is harām—much like we do not need to be told that salāh is obligatory. Once we know those simple truths we need to carve out a more nuanced, tarbiya-based approach to changing an individual and society’s habits and culture.

One can argue that we are all culpable if racism and racial prejudice exists in our midst, even those that do not take part in the abuse personally. Undoing the brainwashing, countering racist propaganda and biased reporting that leads to subconscious racism,[10] and otherwise decolonising the modern Muslim mind requires a proactive effort.

Those brothers and sisters who do experience racial prejudice—especially from other Muslims—need to highlight this problem with wisdom and above all, not let it cause them to feel internally subjugated. Optimism is central to our īmān,[11] and we should not feel that the abuse we receive is happening outside the Sight and Knowledge of Allāh (subḥānahu wa taʿālā). You should treat it as an opportunity to come close to Him as He is giving you an opportunity to enjoin good and forbid evil; to tackle an injustice for His sake, not to gain sympathy or pity from men.

Those brothers and sisters who, upon sincere introspection, find something in their hearts against one racial group or another, and are honest enough to admit it to themselves, should receive glad tidings for the fact that they are aware of it. It is far worse to be unaware or yet worse in denial. Perhaps Allāh has given you this test because He loves to see His slaves struggling and striving against their own hearts to please Him alone.

It would be a shame for the ummah that was sent as an example for the rest of mankind,[12] due to the enlightened, Divine values of Islām, not to take those values seriously and instead seek honour in other than them, leading to the problems outlined above. We take for granted that these values are what brought the world out of the darkness of Jāhiliya into enlightenment. The Prophet (sall Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam) was the earliest human being in known history to explicitly state the equality of all colours, only distinguished due to their taqwa. Those who benefit from the increasing inequality of humans and disempowerment of the masses have succeeded greatly in separating the Muslim ummah from the enlightening values of Islām.

This is essentially what Malcolm X wrote in a letter that Allāh had decreed only to be discovered recently:[13]

“If white Americans could accept the religion of Islam, if they could accept the Oneness of God (Allah) they too could then sincerely accept the Oneness of Men, and cease to measure others always in terms of their ‘difference in color’ (sic). And with racism now plaguing in America like an incurable cancer all thinking Americans should be more respective to Islam as an already proven solution to the race problem.

“The American Negro could never be blamed for his racial “animosities” because his are only reaction or defense mechanism which is subconscious intelligence has forced him to react against the conscious racism practiced (initiated against Negroes in America) by American Whites. But as America’s insane obsession with racism leads her up the suicidal path, nearer to the precipice that leads to the bottomless pits below, I do believe that Whites of the younger generation, in the colleges and universities, through their own young, less hampered intellects will see the “Handwriting on the Wall” and turn for spiritual salvation to the religion of Islam, and force the older generation to turn with them – This is the only way white America can worn off the inevitable disaster that racism always leads to…”[14]

]]>https://www.islam21c.com/islamic-thought/can-muslims-be-racist/feed/1119909Islamophobia IS Racismhttps://www.islam21c.com/politics/islamophobia-is-racism/
https://www.islam21c.com/politics/islamophobia-is-racism/#commentsFri, 06 Nov 2015 09:54:51 +0000http://www.islam21c.com/?p=19686With the rise of racist parties throughout Europe who attack people of colour*, the term ‘racism’ has been distorted to such a degree that even some of the leaders of these racist parties claim to be “anti-racist” (in the same way the leader of the Swedish Democrats, Jimmie Åkesson, has done). The increasingly hostile situation ...

]]>With the rise of racist parties throughout Europe who attack people of colour*, the term ‘racism’ has been distorted to such a degree that even some of the leaders of these racist parties claim to be “anti-racist” (in the same way the leader of the Swedish Democrats, Jimmie Åkesson, has done). The increasingly hostile situation for Muslims in the West deems it necessary to clarify central concepts and ideas in racism, so that we are able to deal with this issue in the most appropriate manner.

RACE

The term ‘race’ has a shaky history of definitions. As Bethencourt points out, ‘race’ was first used as a synonym to ‘caste’.[1] Later it was used to denote noble linage in France and Italy during the late Middle Ages. During the struggles between Muslims and Christians in the Iberian Peninsula, the term ‘Race’ developed into an ethnic meaning and was applied to Muslim and Jewish people to highlight “impurity in the blood”.[2] It was later applied to African and Native Americans. The word was hence conceived in the Iberian context and at the time of the Reconquista.

Later, with the introduction of scientific racism, among which the Swedish botanist Carl von Linnaeus was one of its leading figures, the White race, Homo Europaeus were put on top while those who phenotypically differed from them were considered inferior, with black people piled at the bottom. Scientific racism was used in Sweden to establish The Swedish Eugenics Association in the year 1909. This was set up as a partnership between politicians and scientists who lobbied for a eugenic perspective on social development. In 1922, the association succeeded in establishing The State Institute of Racial Biology. In 1934, Sweden was the first country in the world (even before Nazi Germany) to implement forced sterilization of “unwanted people” in order to prevent “population degeneration”.

When we look into this notion of ‘Scientific Racism’ we find that it is not scientific at all. Race is exclusively a political and social construction, not a biological reality. Racism has been used to justify colonialism, imperialism, slavery, oppression, discrimination, stigmatization and segregation. Many of these formations of exclusion towards people of colour today are based on these historic processes of how race was utilized. Thus, we need to focus on the central discussion around racism since it affects all of us as a power structure in society. To talk about race as a social construction is not to perpetuate racism; rather it is to expose and make inequalities between Whites and Non-Whites visible, and to be able to address and deal with these inequalities.

It is important to highlight what is meant by “White”. Since race is a social construction, Whiteness is too. For instance, someone can be considered black in the UK, brown in Puerto Rico but white in Brazil. This is because whiteness is about those who pass as normal and hold positions of power in society. Unlike people of colour, they are not subject to political solutions because of their whiteness. This is precisely the reason why those who have been considered white have historically varied. Whiteness has never been a static definition. The Irish for instance were once considered as non-white and were actually called the N-word upon their migration to the US. What this demonstrates is that whiteness is not only about skin-colour, but about power. This is also the reason why Greek immigrants in the UK are considered as non-White, but in Greece considered White. This process of being categorized racially is called racialization.

There are many who find talking about race and racism problematic. They often state that they do not see hair- or skin-colour or that they do not care about culture and religion but that they only see the human. This is unfortunately a lie. As humans, we categorize people all the time; when we see each other or hear each other’s names. If we were to do a small experiment, for example, to think of a board of a multimillion pound-company, who do you see? Somali people? Pakistanis? Or Whites (men)? Why is that?

RACISM

There is often confusion about the term racism, which gets conflated with ‘racial prejudice’. They are not the same thing.

Racism is the stratification of people based on their race, religion, culture or ethnicity, where the reference group, the White, hold institutions of power. It is this group which reproduce unequal structures in society, both consciously and unconsciously. Thus, Racism is not merely hate, as many people define it as, rather racism is not racism without the aspect of power. The basic definition of racism can be summarised as:

Racism = racial prejudice + misuse of power by institutions and systems[3]

Racial prejudice is having prejudices against someone or a group of people because of their perceived race, culture, religion or ethnicity. As a Kurd, I can have prejudices against Whites, however I cannot be racist against Whites since I do not hold the power necessary to discriminate or stigmatize Whites. If I would say “All Whites are thieves”, it would not reproduce a racist notion of Whites, whereas if Whites would say, “All Kurds are thieves”, it would be racist.

So people of colour cannot be racists against Whites. This eliminates the ridiculous argument of “reverse racism”. It does not exist. This does not mean that people of colour cannot be unruly and discriminatory. What is merely being stated is that it does not qualify as racism since racism has a historicity, which is absent in the treatment of Whites by non-Whites.

Racism is often structural and institutional. It reproduces inequalities and excludes people from resources and power. For instance, in the city of Gothenburg in Sweden there are two districts, one of which is dominated by Whites, and the other one dominated by people of colour.

Östra Bergsjön (PoC)

Hovås (whites)

Average life, men

74 years

83 years

Average life, women

79 years

86 years

Average income /year

121300 SEK

484000 SEK

Unemployment

18%

3,1%

In Östra Bergsjön, which is dominated by people of colour, men live nine years less than men in Hovås (the district dominated by Whites). People in Östra Bergsjön has an average yearly income 4 times less than those in Hovås and unemployment is soaring in Östra Bergsjön, being 6 times higher than in Hovås.[4]

This is just one small example of how structural racism could look like but, in practically all countries in Europe, the problems of racism have generated a structural divide based on racialization.

So, a more developed definition of racism, based on this discussion, could be:

Racism is an institutionalised power-structure of inequalities that, through the idea of race, culture, ethnicity and/or religion, maintains one group’s privileged position over others, and therefore limits other groups’ possibilities to fully take part in the social, political and economic resources of society.[5]

ISLAMOPHOBIA

What is Islamophobia? Is it racism? There seems to be confusion whether or not it is.

Professor of Comparative Religion Mattias Gardell defines Islamophobia, in what I consider to be one of the best definitions of the term, as, “socially reproduced prejudices and aversions towards Islam and Muslims, and actions and practices which attacks, excludes or discriminate people on the basis that they are or are perceived to be Muslims or are associated to Islam.”[6]

It is not difficult to see this definition and its links to the discussion about racism, since the word race came to be in the Iberian context in the struggles between Muslims and Christians.

Some object to this by saying that Muslims are not a race. Firstly, this objection is highly problematic, because it then means that the objector is defining race biologically which creates more problems for the objector. Secondly, the history of the term race, as previously discussed. Thirdly, as professor Arun Kundnani writes, “But since all racisms are socially and politically constructed rather than reliant on the reality of any biological race, it is perfectly possible for cultural markers associated with Muslimness (forms of dress, rituals, languages, etc.) to be turned into racial signifiers. This racialization of Muslimness is analogous in important ways to anti-Semitism and inseparable from the longer history of racisms in the US and the UK.”[7] Islamophobia is a form of racism and should be addressed as such.

This article is a brief insight into Racism. Research into this area is available throughout the internet in the form of academic journals, dissertations and books by reputable authors. Recommended reading; The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Frantz Fanon’s “The Wretched of the Earth.